UK to 10 IPC's?

[theskeindhu]

Starting to gain some traction winning as the Allies, however, I think a mild boost to the UK would balance things significantly. The ability to fill 5 transports would give much more punch to the UK. Considering India will almost always fall by at the latest, round 5 against a good Japan player, the UK is in a position where they are unable to do anything other than buy 8 units to fill their transports. Anything else is sub optimal, to put pressure on Germany. Thoughts? Currently Germany can sit in a holding pattern, if they bought well and wait for Japan to get to Moscow, they can laugh at any 8 man landing party, assuming they invested in an Air Force, flexing to where the party lands, wiping them out and moving fighters back into attacking positions, or to defend the capital if needed. The UK can’t even buy bombers, extra ships etc, without detracting from getting boots on the ground. 10 production or even 11 would give the UK the ability to put more troops on the ground, or perhaps buy a defensive or offensive piece per turn to gain some ground. Against inferior competition, this doesn’t matter, half the time they leave Berlin underprotected, it’s mainly against good Axis players where this will give the UK a fighting chance to be relevant.

[DoManMacgee]

If you have enough money with UK to fill 4 transports you may want to consider 1-2 FTRs + fill 3 transports instead. This lets you slowly-but-surely accumulate a stack of air units for UK that can be staged in West Russia/Moscow with the purpose of picking off small stacks of 1-2 German/Japanese land units in Russian territories. That way, on Russia’s turn, the Soviets don’t have to commit as many units to retaking the now-empty territories. This puts less strain on the Soviet economy, as instead of sending 1-2 INF + air support to retake 1-2 IPC territories, you’re instead just sending 1 INF, or even a TANK while it blitzes to a different territory (or back to the stack, even!). The reduced strain on the Soviets means that they’re free to either make additional attacks/trades, or build up their main stack more quickly. Both make for a stronger Soviet force that will take a longer time for the Axis to break, if they can break it.

tl;dr your UK navy alone can only hit Norway/Finland/Karelia/Baltic States/Northwestern Europe/France. Adding an airforce on top of that lets you threaten/strafe all of the inland Russian territories (Belorussia/Poland/Ukraine/West Russia) + Moscow’s “back door” (Kazakh/Novosibirsk/Ural/etc.).

[Eqqman]

I’d mention also that in these kinds of situations the Norway factory becomes helpful. Use it to march more troops to Karelia or increase UK air/naval power.

[Boston_NWO]

Adding 2 income to UK would be a game breaking advantage. UK doesn’t need a stack of units in Europe. Maximize threat with 4 transports and fighters and bombers. This ties up a lot of Germany resources without any battles.

[EricB]

Yeah I agree. UK is fine as is. UK isn’t going to take on Germany by itself. The UKs job is to pick off the weak points in Germany’s defenses. Counterattack anything Germany leaves and just trade territories and support Russia if necessary. The main force to take out Germany should come from the US most of the time. The US can bring over 12 units per round and stack them in France or Finland.

Germany generally cannot defend both Karelia and France unless the Allies were very slow getting their transports going or lost a bunch of transports. Go for whichever one is weaker. Also, don’t just drop a mass of bodies into a dead zone to get wiped out unless Germany has very little air power. If NW Europe is undefended, I commonly just drop 1 unit there. If it has a single defender, then I use 2 to take it. Use the minimum to take the territory. Send the rest somewhere safe like Finland.

If Germany lost a lot of planes attacking a fleet, then you can land a ton in Western Europe to force big trades or if they refuse to attack, then it builds a big stack in France.

Another decent strategy I do with the UK is this: If I see Germany has 4 fighters in range of the UK sea zone after G1 and they’ve got something like 1 sub, 1 cruiser in SZ7, then I’ll buy 1 carrier, 1 destroyer plus troops for India. Typically I lose a ship to their cruiser in the battle and end up with just 1 destroyer, 1 carrier, 2 fighters vs the 4 fighters that Germany has. It’s a 50/50 battle. I’ll even take a 40/60 battle favoring Germany if it means taking out German planes. But just don’t risk transports. If you’ve got a transport in the sea zone, then the battle should favor the Allies or don’t do it.

Another tactic to get rid of some German planes is with Russia. If you attack Ukraine and the battle goes really lucky for Russia and you’ve got something like 3 tanks, 1 artillery left in Ukraine, then pull in an AA gun. Set it to die first in the battle. Germany either has to risk planes taking it back, or they have to bring in a lot of tanks to take it. Either you’re picking off their planes or their tanks.

[Eqqman]

@EricB said in UK to 10 IPC's?:

Another tactic to get rid of some German planes is with Russia. If you attack Ukraine and the battle goes really lucky for Russia and you’ve got something like 3 tanks, 1 artillery left in Ukraine, then pull in an AA gun. Set it to die first in the battle. Germany either has to risk planes taking it back, or they have to bring in a lot of tanks to take it. Either you’re picking off their planes or their tanks.

I’m starting to wonder about this a little as I try it. It may encourage Germany to go too all-in on Ukraine G2; I usually see things like 4inf 5tanks sitting there on R2. Even if I can destroy this stack then the majority of Russian units will be lost on the G3 counter, making Russia too weak. And if Ukraine is not traded this gives a big boost to the German position.

[EricB]

@Eqqman I had this almost exact scenario happen yesterday. I left 1 artillery, 3 tanks in Ukraine after 1 round attacks. I pulled in the AA gun.

Germany attacked Ukraine with a lot of land forces, moving their air to western Europe. They attacked with 7 infantry and 5 tanks and lost 2 infantry in the battle leaving 5 infantry, 5 tanks.

Russia 2 I attacked with everything from West Russia and Caucuses. What I like to do there is strafe attack it and not take it. Ideal situation is to leave a tank or two and take out all that army. This is in a KGF situation BTW. KGF I’m trying to kill as many German units as possible in the east. Germany is never going to take Russia in KGF. I’ve never lost Russia to Germany in KGF in any game ever. Only to Japan.

So, in that battle after the first round of battle Germany lost 5 infantry and had left 5 tanks. I ran the battle calculator on it for 1 round and it said Germany had a 90% chance of surviving the next round, so I attacked for a 2nd round. Germany lost all 5 tanks and I took the territory. I’d prefer to retreat back to West Russia in that circumstance and bring new re-enforcements to Caucuses/West Russia from Russia and new builds. It’s not the worst thing to take Ukraine there.

If Germany keeps coming at Russia turn after turn of course Russia would fall, but they cannot do that in KGF without losing Berlin.

[EricB]

One strategy that I think may pose some problems for me to deal with would be Germany building all tanks. I’ve heard that Cow does this. As the Allies, typically I have the USA not attacking anything in round 1, just building up. Round 2 is usually when UK takes Norway and I have the US take Finland and Morocco. It’s important to take both Norway and Finland on the same turn if you’re going in with unprotected transports. If Germany has fighters in Karelia or any bombers this isn’t possible and a naval escort is needed.

Round 3 there’s usually not much of an attack from the US as most of the transports are sailing back. Usually there’s 1 or 2 available to maybe hit NW Europe or drop in Finland. Round 4 is typically the big round where the large US force arrives in Europe. If Germany doesn’t have a big stack of units on France then it’s going down. If they stack it big, I land in Finland. If the stack is that big in France, it can’t be that big in Karelia if Russia was hitting them hard.

So, Germany basically has 4 rounds to try to take out Russia if it’s going to. I think defending against all tanks would be dicey because the US can’t get there quick enough. Probably the best block to that would be the UK helping from India and pulling out of India. If Germany’s going all tanks, then Berlin cannot hold out that long. Would be interesting if Moscow and Berlin both fell. I’d take that as the Allies and trade Moscow for Berlin.

[Eqqman]

@EricB said in UK to 10 IPC's?:

So, Germany basically has 4 rounds to try to take out Russia if it’s going to. I think defending against all tanks would be dicey because the US can’t get there quick enough.
Yes, the Axis gets round 4 to do whatever they can do under this plan. I don’t like ‘defending’ against this strategy because the whole idea is that the Axis is just gambling to win. Germany may have 30% - 40% odds to get Moscow G4, and if they don’t, then the Japanese stack certainly will. These odds are just good enough that I can see why some Axis players might like to try this strategy, but if it fails then it’s a bit unfair to the Allied player since there’s no real backup plan for Axis victory. You can’t stop a player from gambling if they want to and these types of games are not fun for me.

The biggest choice the Allies make on defense I think is when to pull out of India (I discussed this on the A&AO discord). If you pull out UK2 then you can lower the odds of the Moscow attack, but then you have nothing left in Asia if Moscow goes down. If you pull out UK3 then there’s a chance of liberating Moscow and getting Russia back into play.

If Moscow falls and is not immediately retaken I doubt the Allies have any chance even though Germany will be weak in Europe at this point. They will likely not be able to retake every territory that the Allies can grab in the round 4 attacks, but likewise it will still be several turns before the Allies could actually take Berlin, especially with Japanese planes arriving for defense and Japan starting to bleed off UK income in Africa.

[EricB]

@Eqqman Yeah that’s why I think a very quick attack by Germany poses the biggest risk to the way that I play as Allies because it takes some time for the US to get a big force in Europe. Maybe I could just bypass Morocco in round 2 with the US and just land in France/NW Europe with the 2 starting transports (if they weren’t attacked in round 1). It’s only 4 units plus whatever the UK could muster, but it would at least give Germany something else to think about.

I probably have to adapt my play to that very quick strategy by Germany. Typically I play for the long game. I knock Finland/Norway/Morocco/Algeria/Libya/Egypt/Transjordan away from Germany. Then, if Germany stacks Western Europe I take away Karelia/Belorussia/Ukraine. If they stack Karelia I take France and stack it, then start trading Italy.

But if Moscow is on its heels in round 4/5 from all tank builds, then that strategy hasn’t had enough time to bear fruit. Probably would need to hit Europe even earlier, send fighters from the UK to Russia, and pull out of India if necessary.

I’ve played plenty of games where Germany builds a few infantry and 4-5 tanks per turn, and I can defend that. Typically they try to tank blast into Caucuses and I put a big wall in Caucuses with a 3 nation combined force. Then, they either blast into that wall and lose, they retreat back to Germany when the main force arrives on its doorstep, or more likely I see a resignation because they realize it didn’t work.

I think that strategy does probably work a lot with Germany though because whenever I’ve beaten a player trying to do that, I look at their record and oftentimes they have a winning record, so I bet it works a lot. Lots of tanks coming at Russia is dangerous, and if you don’t defend it right with Russia you’re going to lose. That used to happen to me in the first few weeks I was playing this game.